Patrick Swayze, the star of movies such as Dirty Dancing and Ghost, died Monday at age 57 after a 20 month battle with pancreatic cancer. Although Mr. Swayze outlasted his original prognosis of only having a few months left to live, he refused to seek any natural or alternative treatments to help boost his immune system and nourish his body in addition to fighting his cancer — instead following the advice of his doctors to “starve out” the cancer.

During a one-hour “Barbara Walters Special” interview this past January, he told Ms. Walters that he “kept his mind open to miracles”, but unfortunately he closed his mind to any hope of such a miracle coming from outside mainstream medicine, whose track record against pancreatic and other difficult cancers is far from miraculous.

Mr. Swayze also indicated during the interview that he did not want any advice from others on alternative treatments. According to Swayze, though he had taken some “specific immune system Chinese herbs,” he said he hasn`t tried many alternative therapies. He said he learned from his mainstream doctors that if “you feed your body, you feed the insatiable voracious appetite of the cancer.”

Shortly after the interview with Ms. Walters, Mr. Swayze was hospitalized for pneumonia. Tabloid newspaper ran photographs of him in April along with reports that the cancer had metastasized and that his weight had dropped to 105 pounds.

Now, sadly, it appears that the fears voiced in the article have come to pass.

No one can say with certainty whether alternative treatments might have saved or at least prolonged his life or how much better Mr. Swayze’s quality of life might have been if he had opted for less harsh and possibly more effective alternatives. However, those who advocate natural health and bemoan the failure of mainstream cancer treatments believe that alternative therapies would have been much more likely to succeed and recognize that it makes little sense to starve the body. Cancer is only able to gain a foothold in the first place when it defeats a compromised immune system, the natural first line of defense against cancer and other illness. Starving the body further depletes the natural immune system.

The fact is that Mr, Swayze bought into the theory of starving the body along with the cancer, and the result was that what ultimately killed him was the wasting disease known as Cachexia, which is often associated with advanced cancer and often sped along by toxic chemotherapy drugs.

Among the alternatives Mr. Swayze might have explored, in addition to nourishing his body, are oleander, black cumin seed oil (Nigella Sativa) and pancreatic enzymes — all of which have had success against pancreatic cancer, especially when combined with a healthy and nutritional diet and lifestyle that replenishes the body instead of diminishes it. Efforts by this author to get information to Mr. Swayze about alternatives which might have offered hope proved fruitless, though it appears unlikely that such information would have made a difference, given his statements on his chosen course of treatment.

Although Mr. Swayze’s star status should make his loss no greater or lesser than anyone who succumbs to cancer, perhaps his example of placing his faith in treatment that has such a poor track record will stand as an example for others to look outside the box that mainstream cancer treatments has placed us in.